‘An exemplary survey of its kind … a positive illumination of a subject far more central to the story of modern art than first instincts suggest’ – Modern Painters

‘Stimulating and provocative’ – Times Educational Supplement

Now in paperback

The use of words is one of the defining features of
modern art.

From the Impressionists to the present day; from the cut-up Cubist collages of Picasso to the monumental filmic narratives of Fiona Banner; from the subversive schoolboy script of Magritte to the demotic scrawl of Cy Twombly, Writing on the Wall shows how artists have responded to an environment increasingly saturated with words, and how the mass media have adopted and adapted artistic devices in typography, propaganda and advertising.

This groundbreaking study explores the strange, unsettling and often humorous results when words escape their traditional confines and begin to inhabit artworks: it ends with an analysis of current developments in the world of hypertext, where word and image have at last found a more essential unity.

Also of interest
New Media in Art
Sticker City: Paper Graffiti Art
Art + Science Now